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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 7:37 pm and is filed under Reviews, Wii. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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3 Responses to Readers’ Review: Defend Your Castle

This perhaps is the first game that was ported from a free online flash game to a full blown console mini game, exclusively for the Nintendo WiiWare.

Defend Your Castle (DYC) returns, by popular demand, as a polished console game on the ever-so-popular Wii console, packing graphic enhancements, intuitive game controls and cartoony death screams that are out to blow your ears off.

Game Story and Objectives

In retrospect, DYC was very well received on the Internet, boasting for than 10000 game plays each week, with up to 2000 unique visitors. The Wii version of DYC retains the ultimate objective of the game: defend your own castle by removing – literally – oncoming stick figures who are up to no good.

As of the original, DYC features more than 100 levels with increasing difficulty as the player advances. In the Wii version, higher levels of DYC is dominated by giant stick figures (wearing bottle caps) and holding bread sticks, as an attempt to pull down your tiny little castle in the middle of no where.

Perhaps this may not sound very appealing to the uninitiated, DYC, however, is able to make use of the Wii Controls effectively to maximise enjoyment during the course of gameplay.

Controls and Multiplayer Features

As players swing their Wiimotes to fend off the oncoming enemies, they find themselves thrown into a frantic removal of the destructive stick figures, and more than often players are entangled in an array of different magical enhancements, each tailored to destroying enemies of varying strength.

DYC brings great variety and versatility which games often overlook in their design. Multiplayer is simple – with a click of the A button, players can join any existing game and the difficulty level (i.e. the speed and number of oncoming stick figures) will increase accordingly. In a 4 player game, levels above 25 are often a crazy swarm of enemies – big and small – and players will need to continuously swing their Wiimote in hopes of fending off the flood of stick figurines.

Graphics and Sound

DYC cannot – and should not – be faulted for its cartoony graphics and the blatant spelling error of the world ‘helth’. The cartoony and hand drawn pixels are a great way to make the game more welcoming, more comfortable and less intimidating. In line with Ninty’s Parental Policies, parents can safety allow their young kids pick up this game – for neither does it feature gory death scenes, disfigured bodies or spilled brains, but DYC adopts a light and casual tone instead. With heads flying off as through they are buttons (and to be honest, they are), players are often treated to funny death scenes of the invaders.

Whilst the music may not be of the best quality and DYC will definitely not be able to given its price, it still brings somewhat suitable background sound effects (such as the chirping of flying birds and the screams of the dying stickmen), together with rare music pieces that adds on to the game’s atmosphere. Needless to say, however, music is not the main focus of this game, as it is, after all, a game designed to optimise the control features of the Wiimote.

Replay Value

Perhaps DYC will leave players craving for more of the frantic swinging, spraying, hooking, button spamming and sometimes, swearing. It is easy to play and pick up, rewarding any player up to an hour of intense fun and laughter. However, it is sad to note that DYC is only fun to play for short periods of time, and with friends; playing the game for too long will make it overly repetitive, and the lack of multiplayer activity will cause the game to advance too slowly, often boring out them less patient ones.

Overall

For 5USD, DYC is definitely a fun to play and highly interactive multiplayer game. It’s single player feature, though, packs a little less punch than other party based games. It is specially designed for the group of friends who find nothing left in their game box and decide to go for something different – and perhaps something intense – to spend their time.

Verdict:

Graphics and Sound – 7/10
It is only fair to group these 2 together, since the game is not focused on maximising these areas anyway.

Gameplay and Design – 8/10
Highly intuitive. Players can easily enter and exit a game without interrupting the other players. Good multiplayer system, with excellent difficulty change detectors. Players often exhaust their existing upgrades very fast and this meant that in the higher levels, players can only spam their cash on strengthening their walls and healing their castle….

Controls – 7/10
Swinging the stick figures may be fun, but doing it for too long will give you a sore arm. You are recommended to spend no more than 50 minutes on this game, and perhaps even shorter time if you are playing the higher levels, alone.

Replay Value – 8/10
Highly replayable. Good party game for a group of friends to pick up. Easy to start and understand. Gentle learning curve. Playing too many times will render this game repetitive, though.

Price – 9/10
Good value. Easy to play and packs a lot of fun in a small game.

Final Score: 7.6/10

A great game for the single adventurer, group of friends and even for the family. It is highly recommended for any Wii System, since it’s only 5 bucks anyway. Still, please be reminded that this game will lose its appeal in a very short period of time – and once it does, it will take you a few months before you will pick it up again.